


choices

by ThreadSketchier



Series: Love Thy Enemy [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkwardness, Family Shenanigans, Gen, Unconditional Love, more terrible ideas, parenting is hard, to put it charitably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 05:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadSketchier/pseuds/ThreadSketchier
Summary: Luke Skywalker had a plan to save his father or die trying.  Anakin Skywalker had a plan to save his son AND die trying.  Neither of them really had a plan for what came after that.





	choices

**Author's Note:**

> This immediately follows "I won't leave you."

The air was escaping.

At least, that was Luke’s first conscious thought, in reaction to the faint hissing noise somewhere nearby.  His fogged brain conflated the docking bay’s explosive decompression with the idea that a piece of debris might have punched its way through the shuttle’s hull.  Alarmed, he tried to move, but his limbs weren’t inclined to follow orders at the moment.

Wherever he was, it was bright, with light passing through his closed eyelids, and he was curled up in a rather awkward position on something curved and pliable with his legs wedged up against another much harder surface, almost as if he’d fallen asleep spilling out of a chair.  If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn he was simply hungover and waking from a very unfortunate nap underneath the  _ Falcon’s _ gaming table.

_ It was all just a bad dream, huh, Han? _

Luke shifted with a croak of discomfort and felt himself bound in something warm and heavy.  His skin was burning and just the touch of his own clothing made it worse.  The bruises on his left flank and hip from his tumble down the severed catwalk simmered beneath the lingering pain and stiffness throughout his entire body.  His mouth was parched and his tongue seemed three sizes too large, and there was an odd pressure in his ears.  Sleep beckoned him back, pleading with him to just forget the galaxy and  _ rest _ .  But he had to know what that sound was and where it was coming from, and whether they were in danger.

_ They _ .

Heart suddenly pounding, Luke forced his eyes open, wincing at the stark whiteness - and froze when he was able to see his surroundings.

He was in a circular chamber - no, not quite, more like a geodesic sphere - outfitted with numerous control panels and screens, and the upper half of him was nestled in a round padded seat.  A jagged seam ran along the chamber’s entire equator like the perfect teeth of a krayt dragon’s jaw clamped shut.  Luke’s gaze traveled up into the ceiling…

...where his view was met with half a dozen metal arms tipped in ominously sharp instruments, like some gleaming chrome arachnid ready to descend on its prey.

Nausea roiled his stomach.  Swallowing thickly, Luke tried to convince himself that they weren’t going to move the second he took his eyes off of them.

“We are in orbit on the far side of the Sanctuary Moon.”

He was jolted by the voice abruptly crackling from a comm speaker.  His father’s voice.  Embarrassed at his nervousness, Luke took a deep breath to help slow his racing heart.  There was something about the air, he noticed, besides the fact that it smelled as sterile as an isolation med unit.  It seemed... _ enriched _ , each breath more satisfying than usual.  As if he was inhaling concentrated oxygen.

Once more his thoughts ground to a halt.  That hiss.  Like a breath mask or a gas valve.  A hyperbaric chamber.

“Father?  Is this…?”

“One of my meditation chambers.”

There was a scathing dryness in that statement that made Luke’s blood run cold.   _ Meditation chamber?  This is a prison _ , he thought.  A medical prison.  The air must have been pressurized; that would explain his eardrums.  Perhaps here Anakin could breathe unaided, but it was little more comfort or freedom than the mask itself.

“How long have I been out?”

“Fourteen minutes.”

Fourteen nerve-wracking minutes, as evidenced by the tension underlying the monotone response.  Confusion flooded Luke’s mind over why his father was waiting for him rather than...rather than…

In the storm of distraction from his aching body Luke found a still place to consider the two of them, sheltered in a small vessel in the midst of a space littered with the broken remnants of the Empire’s heart, the chaos of duty and affiliations awaiting them the moment they chose a destination anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

Luke’s left hand instinctively closed around a fistful of the cloth shrouding him, and he finally examined it: space-black fabric, thick and smooth with a subtle woven texture on its inner side, likely armorweave.  As he gathered it in his grip, a thin chain slipped free and hung loose from the upper edge.

He was wrapped in his father’s cape.

A whirlwind of emotions rose out of his chest at the absurdly endearing gesture.  Twenty-three years they’d lost together, years of unnecessary carnage and destruction, years of questions and lies and yearning.  At last they were reunited, but oh, what little time they had left in peaceful solitude before he needed to receive medical treatment...somewhere.

Luke’s vision wavered, hot pressure building behind his eyes, and he squeezed them shut in frustration.  He was worried about the fleet and whether the Imperial forces would be reasonable enough to call a ceasefire and retreat, worried about Leia having been wounded in the battle.  But selfishly, childishly, deep down all he wanted in this moment was to disappear with his father.  He felt oddly protective of him, Vader’s fearsome reputation notwithstanding.

With a single command Anakin could order the Imperial fleet to stand down, could even take the Emperor’s place, at least temporarily, and mold the Empire’s remnants into something nobler, and slaughter anyone who refused to comply.  Or he could defect with the promise of enough information to keep Alliance intelligence busy for years, perhaps finding reprieve from execution or imprisonment by having removed the very head of the beast.

Luke wanted neither of those things for him.  In one way or another, his father had been a warrior for most of his life, and a slave before that.  He had grown up believing Anakin had found freedom in escaping Tatooine.  Luke hadn’t even resented him for leaving him behind and dying out among the stars - he’d been  _ free _ , and that was all that mattered.  The truth he’d come to realize was that his father had never truly been free.  Not until now.

_ I must obey my master. _

_ Wars not make one great _ .

“Luke.”

Opening his eyes and blinking away the tears, Luke cautiously dug his right elbow into the seat and began to push himself upright.  “I know,” he groaned, “I  _ know _ .  I know I need…”   _ Blast _ , it even hurt to speak.

At the edge of his sight he caught an orange flicker across a status panel, and heard a soft whirring overhead.  He glanced up to see one of the metal arms unfurling toward him.

With a startled shout that even he hadn’t expected out of himself, Luke jerked backwards from it, slipping out of the chair and falling down into the narrow groove between the seat and the chamber’s console ring.  The arm simply telescoped its way after him.

“ _ Luke _ ,” Anakin’s voice barked across the comm.  “I won’t harm you.  Be still.  This will ease your pain for now.”

Almost hyperventilating with fear, Luke complied, but only because he had nowhere else left to go, crammed up against the console ring.  He fixed his eyes on the faceted white walls, away from the encroaching appendage, and his vision became veiled in red.

The Alliance’s medical droids provided similar treatment - there was nothing particularly comforting about a FX-7 unit - and yet their spindly limbs and skeletal faces never provoked this level of terror and revulsion.  It was  _ this _ chamber and  _ this _ device that left him wanting to crawl out of his own skin.  Agony, self-loathing, despair, and humiliation bled out from the white walls and rose up to engulf him as bile crept up his throat.

This was how his father lived.

The icy-hot sting of a hypo jabbed through his trouser leg and into his thigh.  Luke tried to stifle a sob, but it escaped through his clenched teeth in a moan.

“Luke.  Son.  Listen to me.”

“Father,” he begged in a ragged whisper.  “Father, please…”   _ Get me out of here _ .

An alarm tone sounded and the hissing air changed pitch.  “I’ve begun depressurization, but it must be done gradually.”  For a few moments there was silence on the comm, with only the tide of the respirator carrying across.  “Luke…”

There were no words, Luke realized, in the distant part of his mind not drowned out by the roaring of blood in his ears.  No words could ever convey the length and breadth and depth of  _ I’m sorry _ .

_ My child, my beloved, I’m sorry _ .

And no words were needed when Luke could feel the violence of such keen remorse and regret crashing against his soul like the waves of a storm-churned sea, howling like the desert winds scouring the land clean of life.  The searing brilliance of his father’s spirit was no longer obscured in shadow, but hovered near without touching him, longing to envelop him in strength and consolation but holding back in abject shame.

The sound of the respirator continued over the comm.  Once only a portent of death on the battlefield or in the corridors of Alliance bases, it was now just another aspect of his father’s presence, steady and implacable.  Desperate to regain control of himself, Luke forced his panicked breaths to match its slower cadence.  Shakily he inhaled and exhaled in tandem until his heart was no longer hammering and the painkiller began to draw a slight haze over his senses.

Weakly he murmured, “Don’t.  S’alright, Father.  We’re here.  We’re alive and he’s dead.  We’re together.  We won, Father.  We’re free.  That’s enough.”

The white chamber went gray around the edges, then black, and Luke welcomed it.

 

*

 

The next time he woke Luke felt himself being held again, still swathed in the cape, and his head was nestled against something unyielding.  The respirator was now not merely a sound but a vibration pulsing through his skull; undeterred, Luke burrowed himself deeper into the cloth and curled up into his father’s side, as it was colder out in the dim space of what had to be the passenger cabin.  The worst of his pains were dulled and he seemed to be drifting somewhere nearby, just above or beside his body, tenuously tethered.  Somehow he was exhausted beyond scarce movement and yet suffused with a restless energy.

“Luke.  Can you hear me?”

He nodded slowly.  It was a bad idea nonetheless; the bulkheads seemed to move with him.  He sucked in a hard breath through his nose, fighting the urge to vomit.  Large, gloved fingers searched through the tangle of fabric and grasped his left hand in support, and Luke was tangentially reminded of the fact that he’d dismembered his father in return.  He was confronted with a rather ridiculous mental image of the the two of them standing in a droid repair ward, not-so-patiently waiting to have new prosthetics attached to the stumps of their limbs.   _ Look, Father, we match! _

“Son.  I won’t make this choice for you.  But you must understand...I have fulfilled my purpose.  If I cannot help you, and if you would deny justice for my deeds, there is nothing more I can give you.  Nothing that will not grieve you more than I already have.”

Luke stared up at his father in listless, dejected silence.  No one would have ever believed that the Empire’s greatest living weapon could crouch in despondent fear in his own shuttle, paralyzed into inaction and awaiting orders from his own  _ son _ , utterly blind to what lay right before him.  It was heartbreaking.

Gently he pried his hand out of Anakin’s grip and reached up to brush his fingertips along the edges of the mask.  They were literally within arm’s length of each other, close enough to touch and lie and breathe together, and yet the distance between them remained as vast as the next star system.  The scars of past suffering were a far more impenetrable armor around his heart than what encased his body now.  Tears pricked at Luke’s eyes again, and this time he didn’t care to restrain them, letting them run down freely to sting the burns along his jaw and neck.

“You’ve served many masters, Father,” he whispered.  “I’m not one of them.”

There was the barest hitch in the respirator.

“How old were you when you first became a pilot?” Luke continued.  “What’s my favorite food?”  He coughed out a small, mournful laugh.  “We don’t know a thing about each other.  Did you really think I had politics in mind when I came for you?”  His hand rested near the edge of the blinking control panel on Anakin’s chest.  “I want nothing  _ from _ you, Father.  Only you.  All I want is the chance to know you.  I thought I’d lost you, and...here you are.”

He was feeling increasingly lightheaded and detached, and Luke began to wonder with a strange sort of relief if the end was approaching.  If these were their last minutes together, then it would be best to spend them here and no further.  Leia...he didn’t want to leave Leia, but she had Han.  His newfound sister and brother-in-arms - they had each other.  They wouldn’t be alone.  “Am I dying?” Luke asked softly, before realizing he hadn’t quite meant to say that out loud.

“ _ Not.  Yet _ .”  The words were low and savage, almost a growl, a noise any sane being would cower from.  Luke couldn’t fathom why he found it funny instead.

“Oh.  Okay.  That was a stupid question.”  He couldn’t keep a grin from briefly stretching his lips.  “When I asked you to come with me the first time...I thought we might go home.  Did you hear that Jabba’s dead, thanks to Leia?  Now’s the perfect time to help build up resistance, before someone else comes along to replace them.”

Anakin straightened, rearing back slowly, and Luke winced at the sudden, glorious flare of his pride and reverent awe stabbing through the anesthetic fog clouding his mind.  Leia - his daughter - had defeated  _ Jabba _ , the vile haunt of Tatooine for generations.  Anakin’s fierce joy quickly dimmed, no doubt extinguished in mourning over what he had done to another child of his flesh, but Luke basked in its waning light and gave his father an encouraging smile.  Hope had earned its reward, even in the wasteland.

The fingers of his prosthetic hand were still immobile, but Luke reached back to touch his father’s wounded arm supporting his back.  “But you need to be taken care of first too.  I’m...I’m sorry I went too far.”

The minute tilt of Anakin’s helmet managed to look incredulous.  “This is no hindrance.  It was your right.  I provoked you.”  His head dropped.  “It was not my intent...I forgot you in my anger.”

“Father, it’s - ”

Abruptly Anakin let him go and removed himself as if stung, and the livid immensity of his guilt bore down upon Luke, almost pushing him flat to the deck and crushing the breath from his lungs.  “I have done unspeakable things for the ones I love,” Anakin hissed, “and for naught.  My striving is their destruction.”

Luke gulped in shallow breaths, remembering in sorrow another time when he lay prone before Vader’s towering form, inching away from the tip of a crimson blade.  “But it stops here,” he reminded him, his voice small.  “You made the right choice today, Father.”  He struggled to sit up, drawing the cape around his shoulders.  “And then we’ll do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.  It’s all we can do.”

Anakin wouldn’t meet his gaze.  “Father,” Luke urged gently.  “Look at me.  Please.”

At last the courteous entreaty brought back Anakin’s regard, and Luke crawled forward on his hands and knees to close the space between them.  Bracing his weight on the balled-up fist of his numb prosthetic, he ignored the flurry of spasms that shot up his arm and into his shoulder, but the sight of him shaking spurred his father into grabbing and holding him supportively by the armpit, and Luke flashed him a taut smile.

Again he touched the mask, thumb tenderly stroking across the sharp edge of its exaggerated cheekbone.  “You’re going to be in my nightmares for the rest of my life,” Luke admitted.  “No prison cell, no firing squad, no war campaign will ever take that away from me or Leia.  But just because you can’t change what’s already done doesn’t mean we can’t go forward from here, one step, one day at a time.”

Luke leaned in until his nose nearly met durasteel, never taking his eyes from the black lenses.  “I lost count of how many times I thought my world ended.  When Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen were killed...when I watched you cut down Ben...when Biggs died.  When we met at Cloud City.”  His throat tightened and fresh tears spilled out.  “When Han was gone.  But I had to keep going.  Giving up meant I’d lost everyone I loved  _ and _ all our efforts were for nothing.  That’s far worse.

“But I’m not expecting you to help me,” Luke emphasized.  “Not like that.  I know how much good you can still do.  But you’re worth so much more than what you can do for me.  Just being here with you - you have no idea…”

“I  _ do _ ,” Anakin uttered wearily.  “I so do, little one.”

Soft laughter bubbled up out of Luke’s throat, and he lowered his head to rest his brow on his father’s shoulder.  The positional shift brought another mild wave of vertigo, and he closed his eyes to keep them from rolling about.  “I oughta be annoyed at you calling me that, but I’m not.  I’m so glad.”  There was a slight weight on the back of his head, and he realized it was Anakin’s hand caressing his hair.  Another surge of happiness and relief caught him helplessly between giddy mirth and deep, broken sobs.  “I love you, Father,” he managed between jagged breaths.  “I  _ love _ you.  I never thought I’d get to tell you that.”

No mutual response met him, but Luke wasn’t disheartened; if Anakin wasn’t ready to say it, that was all right.  If he never said it at all, he’d already proven his love by his actions.  In any case, Luke was very much content to just melt back into his father’s side, indifferent to all the spots where armor and mechanics poked into him.  This was all he’d ever wanted and more than he’d hoped for in the end.

After a couple of minutes Luke’s eyes grew heavy and he began to drift off again, until Anakin’s voice thrummed through his bones once more.

“I believed you were dead in your mother’s womb.  Dead...by my hand.”

Luke’s eyes shot back open, the words twisting an icy knot in his gut.  Was this the root of his father’s anguish and guilt?  He hastened to remember what Leia had told him.   _ She died when I was very young _ .  But they were  _ twins _ .  Leia still managed to carry some indistinct memories of their mother, while he had none.  What exactly had happened?  The possibilities raced through his mind, quicker than he could grasp them in his state.

Frightened but seeking focus, Luke asked, “What was her name?”  Once upon a time she had existed, and somehow bore him and his sister.  That was the first step, to know her beyond the tragedy.

For several moments Anakin was silent, and Luke slipped his left arm out of the cape to wrap it around his father’s waist in reassurance.

“Padmé,” he finally spoke, like a man feeling the kiss of water upon a scorched tongue.  “Padmé Naberrie Amidala.”

Luke’s heart stuttered.   _ Amidala _ .  Four syllables that evoked inspiration, patriotism, and devotion across the galaxy.  A paragon of democracy and everything that had remained virtuous of the Republic’s dusk.  The name on the lips of the old guard as a martyr and in the hearts of the young as their idol, her regnal face daubed and sprayed as defiant graffiti across a thousand rebellious worlds, or on the chassis of Alliance fighters.  It was even said in Naboo folklore that she was the sleeping queen who would one day awaken and emerge from the waters to liberate her people once more.  Others still bore the rumor, both hopeful and cruel, that she lived still, somewhere out in the galactic fringe, secretly helping those in need and biding her time to return.  Until now, Luke had never understood why he’d been filled with a strange sense of wonder and a deep sadness whenever mention of her arose, or when he saw her emblazoned portrait.  He’d thought, perhaps, that it was simply the injustice of her untimely death.

He almost wanted to throw his head back and laugh at the sheer improbability of it all.  The son of a Jedi General and a Queen and Senator.   _ Leia _ he could see, but himself?  What were the odds, across the span of an entire galaxy?

Recollecting her face from the few official holograms he’d seen, Luke tried to find himself in Amidala’s graceful, delicate features.  Something else entirely came to mind.

“Ah.  That’s why we’re short,” he remarked with a wry grin.

Peeking up at his father, he found Anakin staring down at him with what must have been exasperation.  All Luke could manage was to chuckle sheepishly, trailing off into another dry coughing spell.

Abruptly he felt himself being lifted again, and the starfield came into view as Anakin carried him back to the cockpit.  Being suspended in his father’s arms made Luke acutely aware of how exhausted he truly was.  He struggled to keep his train of thought and his eyes open once he was settled into the copilot’s seat, beyond an almost visceral disappointment of being separated from the warmth of Anakin’s touch.

It was presumptuous to think that a being’s public persona equated their personal beliefs, but in this case Luke estimated it wasn’t that far of a stretch.  “She…”  Another cough, this one wetter, and he almost gagged.  “She would’ve...wanted you to...be at peace,” he whispered hoarsely.

An ugly noise, short and guttural, issued from the vocoder.  “ _ Peace _ .”  Anakin drew out the word, at once sardonic and wistful.  His hand skimmed the controls by rote, and the quiet was broken by the engines humming to life.  Slowly the dark curve of Endor’s moon began to fall away.  “Not a word I know.  I wasn’t bred for it.”

Off in the distance, where the starry glimmer was shot through with the scattered lights of Alliance cruisers and Star Destroyers, hung a familiar grey dagger that sent a shiver through Luke despite the circumstances.  His right arm twitched, the prosthetic seizing involuntarily at the memory, and Anakin looked across at him.  Sipping a deep breath, Luke massaged his forearm, reminding himself that it wasn’t Bespin anymore.

Anakin’s voice came out as soft as the vocoder would allow.  “In truth, she could rest no more than I.”  He gazed out at the stars once more.  “I would have laid the galaxy at her feet.  And I would have done the same for you.”

_ Join me, and we can rule the galaxy as father and son! _

That offer had rung through his mind every sleepless night, tormenting him, until he’d forced himself to take hold of it, turning it over and over like a river stone in his palm.

_ Join me. _

_ Father and son _ .

Luke reached over to grasp Anakin’s arm just above the severed wrist.  “But that’s not what she wanted either, was it?” he asked.

The black mask remained fixed on him for several moments before Anakin turned away again, watching the  _ Executor’s _ spearhead growing steadily larger across the sky, and it seemed that he was torn.  Then he looked down at Luke’s hand upon his arm.  When he lifted his head he responded with a question of his own.

“Tell me, Luke, why should  _ I _ leave you?  You have pledged your soul and given your very life for mine.  How can I abide in exile while you and your sister continue undoing the works I have wrought?”

Luke opened his mouth, gathered breath for an argument he knew he couldn’t make, and pressed his lips back together in chagrin.  Equally they were battered and wounded and stretched thin, and eager as ever to push it all aside for the sake of what was right, what needed to be done.  He sighed inwardly.

“Well...you did say it was our destiny to be together.  Just not in the way you thought,” Luke said in resignation, with a lopsided smile.

They were almost in range of identification; any closer and they were liable to be hailed.  He closed his eyes and turned his face into the chair’s backrest.  There was really nothing to fear; Vader’s harsh standards were infamous.  Not a hair on his head would be plucked lest the crew incurred his father’s wrath.  For that matter, he almost worried more for  _ their _ sakes.

They were beings such as himself, serving the cause they believed in, however twisted and corrupt.  And he had wiped out more than a million of them in a single stroke, not including the countless others he’d killed over the past few years.  Quality care they might give him, but they wouldn’t do it gladly, and he couldn’t fault them.

Something compelled Luke to open his eyes again, and he found Anakin staring at him.  What should have been unnerving carried an odd sense of tenderness behind it.  His father toggled the controls, then took hold of the steering yoke, and the shuttle began to veer away from the  _ Executor _ .

Luke frowned, leaning forward in the seat.  “Wh...Wait, where are we going?”

“You asked me to come with you, did you not?”  There was a definite note of dry humor in Anakin’s tone.

Anxiety and an almost manic delight wrestled within his ribcage.  It was going to be absolute insanity, and yet...and  _ yet _ …

Anakin would likely never gain anyone’s full trust within the Alliance; Vader would always overshadow him to one degree or another.  As the Emperor’s right hand, the very symbol of death itself, he occupied a place even the Rebellion’s highest-ranking defectors couldn’t boast.  But if  _ Darth Vader _ could be swayed from evil, there was no greater message of hope that could be expressed.  The end of this war was not unto destruction, but liberation.

_ Force, give me strength _ .  Being offered a miraculous second chance at life after his fall from Cloud City had given him the stamina to cling to that fragile weathervane long enough for the  _ Falcon _ to rescue him.  He could do this.

For the two of them, he could do anything.

Luke pursed his lips in determination.  “Then I’ll be your advocate.”

“I can speak for myself,  _ young _ one,” Anakin replied tersely.

“I know, it’s just…”  Luke gestured helplessly.  He thought of Han, sneaking off to confront a scout trooper with his idiot’s grin.  “It’s  _ you _ .”

He imagined the look on his father’s face to be just as stony as the mask covering it.

Drowsiness cast aside, Luke scooted forward in the chair and reached for the comm, the gears in his head already shifting.  “Let’s head straight for  _ Home One _ .  That Mon Cal cruiser right over there.  What’s our designation?”

“ST 321.”

He glanced at his father.  “...Really.”

“Were you expecting some ominous epithet harboring doom or vengeance as my reputation implies?”  Anakin asked laconically.

“Something like that.”

“Not everything requires such attention to detail.”

Luke snorted.  “You mean you can’t be particularly threatening in this bird, admit it.”  He smiled back.  “Have I mentioned that I love you, Father?”

“...I shall never tire of hearing it, son.”

“Good.”  Doing his best to clear his throat, Luke opened the comm as the graceful curves of  _ Home One _ swelled across the viewport.  “ _ Home One _ , this is Commander Luke Skywalker aboard Imperial shuttle ST 321, code clearance Trill-Forn-Besh-Cresh, do you copy, over…?”


End file.
